tetris

Tetris is one of the most popular video games of all time. It has numerous variations and is available on virtually any platform, including visual calculators and electronic greeting cards. The game makes excellent use of tetrominos – shapes made up of different variations of four square clusters – with the player struggling against time and the limits of his or her mental rotation abilities in order to align the shapes in a particular manner.

The game was designed and programmed by Alexay Pajitnov. However, the copyrights were immediately transferred to Alexay Pajitnov’s then employer – the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR – and the game was effectively distributed freely across the Soviet block countries. Mr. Pajitnov did not profit from the game until he set up The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers in 1996.